


The Child and The Shadow

by bravelikealady



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, DC Cinematic Universe, Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 03:39:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6268075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravelikealady/pseuds/bravelikealady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>suffering builds character</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Child and The Shadow

Eight years had passed.

The Child was not the scrawny fledgling he had watched scale the walls of The Pit, the child whose memory danced in his mind and kept the pain at bay. She was tall, lithe, and pretty, but the eyes… the eyes were the same, bright and wild, as promising as that sky above him had been.

And she had come back for him, the Shadow, a man who thought to die in darkness, his only purpose, her, gone on without him…

The Child found her father, the mercenary, and he had taken her in, doting on her. The Shadow wanted to be happy for her… He did… but something in the man read false. The Shadow could sense the danger that lay behind the man’s control. And the man knew. And he hated the Shadow for it.

But still, for the child, for his daughter, the man let the Shadow stay, took him from the Pit, gave him to the doctors to ease the pain, to cover that ghastly thing that had once been his face. The man cringed at the damage done to his face. The Child did not. She cleaned him up, stitched him up, touched him, felt him, her delicate fingers, the fingers of a woman, not a child, tracing the lips he had left, brushing lovingly along his chin, even where it was not but bone. The Child touched the Shadow, unafraid.

She talked to him every night, sneaking into his room, taking comfort in his shade as she had in her early years. She showed him silly things from places with strange names. She told him stories of her father, told him stories passed to her of her mother.

And soon, the talking was his, his darkness: groaning, moaning, and questioning the actions of her father, the direction of his training. He could see that it hurt her, to see that any could speak ill of him, but she let him rant and rave all the same. And when his body was broken, bleeding, and bruised, neither of them would say anything. She would still come in the night, lie in his shadow, wash the blood from his brow, nurse the welts on his back, and kiss the scabs on his knuckles.

And so the Shadow found light. And so the Child grew.

And one night, the Child with skylight for eyes was a woman and she let the Shadow inside her. His darkness was her own. She would never let him forget it.

 


End file.
